


I Would Hold You Now

by Myrime



Series: your name like a prayer [1]
Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M, Fade, Fade Sex, Post-Trespasser, Romance, dream - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-31
Updated: 2016-03-31
Packaged: 2018-05-30 08:42:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6416734
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Myrime/pseuds/Myrime
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When she dreams she still has both her arms, and it is always her left hand that she uses to trail Solas' features. Because here in the Fade she still has him, too.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Would Hold You Now

 

“Ma vhenan,” he calls her and she can hear the smile in his voice, can taste it in the air as if it was true.

At first she never turns to face him but spends agonizing seconds looking down at herself, hating how – involuntarily and invariably – hope begins to build inside her. She is never quite sure whether she ought to be disappointed when she finds both her hands still attached to her body. And unblemished at that. No glowing green mark there. Not here.

“Solas,” she greets tonelessly and hopes fervently that he is not real. It had been made abundantly clear that what they had was – despite his assertion – only a lie. It was not her he had wanted, and it was not her he had loved.

He would never come to her in the waking world, where they are opponents now – or maybe they have always been. But in the Fade, away from the oppressing stone walls from the castle he had gifted her, away from the concerned looks of her friends who try to make her go on when all she wants is to bury herself in the past, here he stands before her like he was, eyes dark and smile earnest and posture relaxed as if expecting the very tides to part for him. Knowing now who he is, they probably would.

There is still sorrow in his expression, but not the frantic, pressing need to tear her world apart. It is, after all, already unravelling. The wolf’s fur, too, is missing from his shoulders but, somehow, he seems taller without it, less like he is about to fix her with six glowing eyes and the maniac grin of a trickster god.

Solas – because she cannot call him Fen’Harel here, where none of them are real but just a figment of her strained mind – holds out his hand in a silent invitation. There are no words needed for her to follow him. And while her skin tingles when it meets his, she tries to persuade herself for the hundredth time that this is not a mistake.

Solas had taken her arm and her heart. There was nothing left for him to take so he would not come to her, neither in this painful, distorted mirror image of what could have been, nor in the real world. This is only a spirit acting out her foolish dream, or a demon waiting for the right moment to devour her.

She finds that, as she allowed herself to be pulled in against his chest, it does not matter.

“Emma lath,” he murmurs into her hair and she wishes he would be silent, because he had never allowed his voice to carry this amount of emotion before everything fell apart. It is not fair of him to torment her like this now.

Impatiently – for she can never know when her sleep will be interrupted by bad news needing her immediate attention – she tilts her head back until she can take in his face, the hunger displayed there so openly. It makes her certain, for a moment that this is, indeed, a demon, and any second now his skin will break apart to reveal the monster lurking underneath.

Pushing the image away, she uses her left hand to pull his face down onto hers. Her dark thoughts dissipate when his lips meet hers, tasting just as she remembers them, but pressing new words into the tender skin of her flesh now.

“Ir abelas,” he says, leaving a burning trail down her neck and further onto her collarbone.

She has learned long ago that he never lingers long on her face, avoiding those places with cold certainty where her vallaslin had once adorned her skin. Just one more thing he had taken away. (One more thing she had given him.)

The scenery around them shifts, so swiftly and easily that she feels dizzy. But she cannot fall, for Solas holds her in an embrace so firm that it almost seems like he is never going to let go of her again.

She knows better, of course.

There is just enough time for her to take in the familiar sight of her bedroom at Skyhold, before Solas lowers her gently onto the bed amidst a pile of wolf pelts that feel like sweetest mockery on her skin.

Suppressing the shiver running through her, she arches her back as his steady rain of kisses never falters through the movement. Then he halts, burying his nose into her hair, and takes a breath as deep as a drowning man would the moment his burning lungs give up the fight.

Lavellan seizes the opportunity to run her hands up his sides and further up along the jaws he used to clench so often, and onto his ears, her left index finger caressing the pointed tip, adding pressure at just the right spot to make his deep breath catch. A grin spreads on her face as she tilts her head just so that her lips can close around his ear lobe.

Solas’ composure breaks further as a moan escapes his throat. “Vhenan,” he whispers and she wonders why he always has to sully their meetings with words. It might be a result of all the centuries he spent alone, in uthenera or wandering this world he does not understand.

She, in return, stays silent. He had refused to listen to her when she had been trying to make him see reason, so she had decided that words are wasted on him. They would also reveal too much of her, and she has given him enough.

Turning her touch into slight sucking, she enjoys the sensation of the shudder rippling through his form. This might very well be not real, but she relishes the thought of having an inkling of control over him. Here, at least.

Solas’ hand cups the back of her head, holding her in place as he reclaims her lips with his own, more insistent than before, his tongue demanding entrance with the quiet impatience of one not used to being denied anything.

And she does not deny him, but lets her tongue encircle his, wondering all the while whether he could taste her desperation.

When they break apart to fill their lungs with much needed oxygen, Lavellan tugs at the collar of his shirt, half-questioning. This had so often been the moment he had frozen and left, back when they had started this game, saying something about wrongness and her deserving so much better. She still remembers waking up laughing, only the aching need between her thighs witness to her shame. (Because this is exactly what she deserves. This lying man who attempts to take the world from her and whom she still loves.)

They had not stopped there for quite some time now, although she does not know what has changed. She has decided, though, to not ask questions, lest the answers hurt more than simple rejection.

“So eager,” Solas says and makes no move to take off his shirt. Instead, his fingers fly over the skin of her chest right above her nightgown, close enough that she can feel his warmth but not quite touching. His other hand presses her back into the mattress when she tries to lean in closer.

They always move at his pace, no matter how hard she tries to end up his plans.

His lips quirk into a smile as she raises first one leg and then the other, linking her feet at his back to pull him down onto her. In a rare show of benevolence he follows her tugging, lowering himself until their bodies all but melt into each other. His bulging need presses against her hips but he shows no reaction when she bucks against him, half involuntarily as fire spreads through her, from her lower lips through her abdomen and chest all the way into her fingertips until her skin tingles in anticipation.

Her thighs clench as he reaches back with one hand, his hungry gaze never once leaving hers, to let his fingers wander unbelievably slow over the whole length of her leg, pushing up the hem of her gown inch by agonizing inch, only to stop seconds away from reaching his ultimate destination.

It proves very hard to suppress the frustrated groan building up in her throat and, judging on his chuckle, she is not too successful. Deciding that two can play this game, she snaps her head forward to capture him in another kiss, tongue and teeth dancing, while she slips her own hands beneath his shirt, following the lines of his well-formed muscles which she knows so intimately by now.

She is so distracted by being allowed to feel him here, when they are truly meeting only in passing anymore as distant figures on desolate battlefields, that she is taken by surprise when his fingers are suddenly ghosting over her lower lips, probing her and finding her ready for him.

She wonders whether her friends would see this as treason, the way her body sings for him, how her hips buck in anticipation of his talented fingers. He would be amused by this thought, no doubt, but it does not matter. Or it does, and she simply does not care.

A finger enters her without warning, soon to be joined by a second one. Time slows and when he starts moving she digs her nails into his back, not sure whether it is to steady herself or to keep him from ever stopping. His fingers curl and twist, teasing, testing her, but the hunger in his gaze is only increasing.

Then he retreats, removing not only his hands from her feverish skin but sitting up altogether, disentangling himself easily from her legs, which had gone weak at some point during his touch.

Smirking at her protesting moan, he brings his fingers up to his mouth, sucking her juice off them even while a predatorily glint enters his eyes. An unbidden picture of her Keeper pops up in Lavellan’s mind, lecturing sternly about her scent and the Dread Wolf. When he grins, a sight that is made only more potent by his fingers still filling his mouth, she knows that she is lost.

Something snaps inside her at this realization and his name falls from her lips, as naturally as if she had never forbidden herself to speak it ever again. “Solas, please,” and she is not sure whether it really is a plea or more of a demand. This is _her_ dream, after all, and it should not leave her waiting and begging.

Almost gently he cups her cheek, studying her as if this is her – their – last moment and he needs to memorize her every features.

A sudden cool breeze is the only indicator of the Fade around them being manipulated, then she feels the night air rush in to meet her skin as both their garments disappear as surely as if they had never worn anything to begin with.

She barely has any time to drink in Solas’ body hovering over hers before he is moving. He is all teeth and tongue and fingers, roaming her skin and leaving not a single spot out as if he is drawing a map of her inside his head, stitching her curves into the balms of his hands to have them close to him forever.

Reciprocating eagerly, Lavellan thinks briefly that _her_ map of him is already too detailed, leaving her wanting and lonely every time she wakes. Then, however, she forces her mind to go blank, and she does not need much strength for that, at all. If witnessing the unfolding end of her world has taught her anything, it is to lose herself in the moment – and, of course, that regrets are taking up too much of the time they are rapidly running out of.

“Ma vhenan,” Solas breathes against her neck as his throbbing length finds its way to her aching opening.

Snapping her mouth shut she only just keeps herself from replying in kind. Instead, she arches upwards, barely managing to enfold the tip of his cock with her wetness before Solas’ grip stops her movement. He presses both of them into the mattress as he buries himself agonizingly slow into her waiting depths.

Lavellan is sure that time stops as he fills her, making her feel more complete than the illusion of having both her arms again ever could. Once he is buried to the hilt they both pause, closing their eyes, not drawing breath. Solas lets his forehead rest against her cheeks, as still as the calm before the storm he seeks to be.

Then, with the gasping sigh of all the colours of the world rushing back in, he retreats, halting only for a fraction of a second before pushing right back in, picking up pace as Lavellan feels pressure building inside her, filling every fibre of her body and, seemingly, leaking out into the air around them, too.

When she finds her release, she clings to Solas with all her might, not minding for once how desperately his name tears itself from her throat. For one unending moment she is whole.

Solas rushes in and out of her until he, too, reaches his climax, nearly crushing her in an embrace that makes her almost believe that, this time, they will not part.

Panting and bathing in the cool night air around them, they lie motionlessly for a time, still joined, still touching, still one. It is almost nice, upholding the illusion until reluctance to let go sets in and with it the memory of all the reasons of why they have to, of who they are and why they are impossible.

“Ir abelas,” Solas starts, his words the perfect weapon to ruin her feeling of completeness. They are so much deadlier than his magic could ever be, old god or not. When she begins to disentangle herself, he all but scrambles from the bed to give her the freedom she so desperately wants and, at the same time, despises.

One dismissive movement of his hand later, they are both fully clothed and he turns away towards the balcony, presumably to give her some privacy to reassemble her composure, or maybe because he already regrets the act.

She feels used – by her own depraved cravings, no less.

She is lost.

And she cannot even hate him for it, because this is her dream, her heart seeking out the man who would destroy her. And is doing so, already.

She does not join him on the balcony, but merely whispers a weak, “Dareth shiral, vhenan.”

And then she wakes.

Her bedroom in Skyhold looks different without him there. She _feels_ different, too. Not fulfilled and whole anymore, but aching, alone.

_It was not real_ , she tells herself, _It was just a dream._ Solas is a Somniari, true, and it would be so simple for him to find her in the Fade. She need not even invite him. But he would not.

Kicking the blankets away from her, Lavellan hopes that that the cold mountain air can drive the still throbbing need out of her traitorous body, even though she knows that it will linger in her mind.

Trying to go back to sleep, she knows from experience, would be to no avail, and closing her eyes would only result in memories popping up unbidden, mocking her for her inability to escape them.

She hears the messenger before he even reaches the steps to her quarters, and when he pushes through the door, she awaits him as awake and ready as she can be in her battered state.

“Lady Inquisitor,” the man exclaims, visibly relieved that he does not have to rouse her from her sleep. “Fen’Harel’s forces have been sighted on their way to –“

It takes a lot of effort to swallow the probably hysteric laughter bubbling up her throat. Here she is, stupid, dreaming girl, entertaining the idle hope that Solas might still care enough for her to seek her out, if only in the Fade. And in truth he is marching his troops against her.

_Wake up,_ she scolds herself while reaching for her armour. _It was not real. It will never be real._

 

**Author's Note:**

> I always wondered how to let go of someone who can stalk your dreams. How to you dream of or remember someone if it is always perfectly possible that he is actually real there in the Fade, not only a figment of your memory?  
> So, what do you think, was this Solas here real?
> 
> The title is from Sleeping At Last's 'Resolve': "I would hold you now, if only I knew how"
> 
> Oh, forgot to add the translations:  
> Ma vhenan - my heart  
> Emma lath - my love  
> Ir abelas - I'm sorry  
> Daleth shiral - Farewell


End file.
